Tuesday, October 18, 2005

According to the speakers at the seminar, progressives believe that bioethics should concern itself with social justice issues, and that human dignity is best promoted by providing the necessities of life, like healthcare, food and education. Conservatives, on the other hand, want 'government enforcement of majoritarian prejudices that are based on emotion and instinct and repugnance'. To use the words of R. Alta Charo, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, its recent interest is 'foetus fetishism'.

Goodness. They may be experts in ethics, but they aren't experts in civilized debate, as another ethicist observes:

"Other fields and disciplines, such a political science and economics, have their liberals and conservatives, but they are in the same field -- not one side in and one side out -- and their reputations as fields do not notably suffer from the disagreements. It is otherwise with bioethics. The general public, and the medical and health policy world, will find it all too easy to dismiss bioethics as ideology driven, left or right politics in sheep's clothing. If we besmirch each other long enough, the public will soon conclude that we are all frauds."